at least it was unusaul for me. While prowling a rather large sample of moss that was pried from a chunk of rotting wood. I focused on this Sporangium. The operculum had long since detached itself from the specimen and only the peristome remained. However, what caught my eye was a bit of movement. I assumed that one of my micro insects that I normally run across in or among the delicate strands of moss, was the reason for the movement the was inside of the sporangium. So I cranked up the power on the scope a little bit and to my surprise the peristome was opening and closing at approximately the rate of once every second or a fraction thereof. I have never seen a plant of any kind do this with the exception of those videos taken under time lapse photography. To bad this is a still image, it was amazing to observe.

This sounds like a scientific mystery to me Ken. Maybe you could have dissected the Sporangium to see if anything was inside. Very strange _________________Take Nothing but Pictures--Leave Nothing but Footprints.
Doug Breda

Interesting! Could it have been becasue of the heat of a lamp you use? Doesn't a change in humidity trigger the release of the spores? There could be some sort of mechanism in the sporangium that reacts on temperature/humidity. Just a guess.

You know I considered that Wim and you could be right. If spores were being released I would not have seen them with a stereomicroscope of course. Considering heat and humidity, I was thinking that if that were the case, wouldn't the sporangiums peristome just have opened and remained open, instead of opening and closing in a cyclic pattern. Quite an odd occurance and I would not know where to begin to search for information on such an event.